Cracks
by Starr Bryte
Summary: There are cracks in the universe, cracks in the world and cracks inside her head. In some she sees the things she's not allowed to remember, in some she sees the Silence and in some she sees a dead planet with burnt orange skies, silver trees and blood red grass. The DoctorDonna isn't dead. She's just sleeping. And her nightmares are going to drive Donna Noble right round the bend.
1. The Dream

**AN:** This is going to be a weird fic. I can feel it. Besides the fact that I wrote this while listening to NASA recordings of planetary noise and Ingrid Michealson songs "Everybody" and "The Chain". I'm sure I'm not the only one who thought about Donna during Season 5, especially when The Doctor talked to Amy about how nothing is ever really forgotten so long as there is something to remind us. And Donna, despite having her head forcibly shoved back under the metaphorical sand, lives on Earth during the 21st Century where all the action is happening and if there's one thing I've noticed about her is that she has a need to pick at things until she understands them. And the DoctorDonna is an entity on par with Bad Wolf. Things are very likely to start breaking right along with those cracks in the universe.

So here's me and the DoctorDonna poking at things until they break. Fic takes place slightly after "Journey's End" and will meander it's way through canon. Most of the main plot was inspired by a very disturbing dream I had about the Time War and just what the Doctor did to Gallifrey and the effects that is still being seen into the future.

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It seems that I have been held

In some dreaming state

A tourist in the waking world

Never quite awake

~"Blinding" Florence+The Machines

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The hill she was standing on was just one of many hills which rolled ever upwards until they hit the mountain range that seemed to go on forever. The grass was long and thick and rustled against her knees, but made no sound. There was a forest at the start of the mountains that crowded up almost into the snow cap.

It was all very peaceful and quiet. It felt as if she had been standing there forever and maybe she had. There was no light source to mark the passage of time and nothing to mark the season. As far as she knew it had always been like that and always would be with no beginning or end. An eternal summer at the peak of perfection.

There was something horribly wrong with it all. The silence. The grass. The trees. The mountains. The sky. It was all wrong. All of it.

There should have been the sound of wind through the grass, the distant rustle of the trees. There should have been bird song or at least insect noises. But there was nothing. She couldn't even hear herself breathing.

The sky was a sickly shade of orange, the kind of color you saw before a storm, as if nature was going to be violently sick all over everything. The trees were a shining metallic color that reflected everything around them. As the trees swayed the leaves turned into a dizzying array of flickering light that was too chaotic to be beautiful. Rather headache inducing actually. The grass was the color of drying blood, and went from deep red to a rusty brown.

The mountains were just mountains though so she concentrated mostly on that and steadfastly ignored everything else for as long as she could. It was an appallingly short amount of time (time? What was time here?) before she was heartily dissatisfied.

There was still something wrong with the mountains though. They were absurdly big. Granted she had never seen a mountain (had she? It had been so cold and the parka so warm. He had laughed at her. Who had?) and she probably never would (the mountains were made of diamond he said, but that's just silly, there was no such thing... was there?). She had never left England (walked barefoot through Egypt she did. No she didn't, watching too many documentaries on the telly missus.). But even despite that there was still something terribly wrong about those mountains.

No. Not the mountains. The horizon where the sky met those mountains. There was a strange line that curved over those mountains, like there was something there. Something round like a snow globe. Something unnatural that reflected the light strangely.

It was all wrong. Why was everything so horribly wrong? She looked down and even then it took her a moment to realize.

The grass wasn't bending to a silent breeze it was bent. Frozen in that moment when the wind touched it.

Everything was still in that moment. As if the entire planet was holding it's breath, had always been holding it's breath, would hold it's breath forever. Trapped always inside a perfect moment.

"This is wrong." She said out loud, and even her voice seemed to fall flat, the sound refusing to carry. Her hands went up to grasp the sides of her head, her fingers tangling in her hair to yank distractedly. The gesture was strangely familiar as if she spent a good deal of time in this pose. Even that felt wrong.

"It's wrong, it's all wrong, why is it wrong?!" She repeated, her voice raising in volume with her fear and confusion.

"It's because the planet is dead." The voice behind her was so familiar her heart ached. The fear and confusion washed away on a tidal wave of love and concern and exasperation and worry. She spun around to face him, skinny, ridiculous, fabulous man! She'd missed him so much she couldn't stand it!

She had barely gotten more than a glimpse of wild hair and dizzying brown eyes and a thin, tired face (he's not eating, he's not sleeping and his eyes, oh my god what have you done to yourself?!).

Her eyes snapped open. The room was dark except for the city lights streaming through the blinds of her window. Shaun snored away next to her, the sound both grating and comforting at once.

She blinked, wondering why she had woken up so abruptly. She blinked again and realized that her cheeks were wet. She breathed in slowly and the sound was shaky and surprisingly loud. Her chest ached, she was so sad.

Wait... Why was she sad..?

She wiped her eyes and stared at her damp fingertips in confusion.

Why was she crying..?

"I miss you!" She hissed, angry suddenly, so very angry and so very sad and she missed him so very much. The moment the words left her lips there was a strange sound, like singing only more grating, like the wind (like the planets, like the galaxy, like the universe) and there was a moment where she was so light-headed all she saw was white (and gold, so gold, like the heart of the sun and gold dust and starlight).

Wait...

Miss?

Miss who..?


	2. The Morning After

**AN: **Urgh, I wanted this chapter done! So frustrating! Every time I did a read through there was something more to add or say. And DoctorDonna just would not shut up! Then i had to do a bunch of research and stuff, but that was more fun than frustrating so whatever. I'm posting this before I go into work so it's something like 10:23 in the morning and I leave at 10:30 so I'm cutting it a touch close. Hope you all enjoy and much love for my two reviewers! To answer a question put to me, I have no idea right now if the Doctor and Donna will ever meet again. I hope so. But we'll see. Reviews make me happy so drop me a line even if it's just to say "good fanfic write more ugggah!"

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Donna Noble would be the first to say that nothing ever got to her. Life would happen and she would brush it off and continue moving forward. If Donna Noble didn't see it or experience it then obviously it never happened. The public was made up of stupid apes who let every little thing throw them off kilter. If you were alive and had your health why worry?

It took less than an hour to brush off the fact that two whole years of her life were missing (two years, three months, one week, four days, sixteen hours, forty-five minutes, thirty-six seconds). Her mum and grandad never talked about it or mentioned it so why should she? Apparently she didn't miss much besides people being people (stupid apes) and letting little things make them believe the world was ending. Planets in the sky, who were they fooling? (The sky was one fire and the air was full of poison) Government weapons tests probably.

To those who knew her she was still the same old Donna. Still oblivious and letting the obvious fly right over her head. They teased her about her memory but she snarked right back, as confrontational and lippy as ever and the topic was quickly dropped in the face of an infamous Donna Noble tongue-lashing.

To those who knew her best Donna had changed. It was like watching someone walk around with brain damage. There was something missing. Something vital. The Doctor had promised that so long as they didn't talk about him or the TARDIS or aliens to her, she would remember nothing. It would all revert to the way it was before they had met. But the human mind, especially one enhanced by regeneration energy, the Time Vortex and Bad Wolf is an unpredictable thing. Especially when the mind held the capabilities of a Time Lord with the ability to remember every tiny detail of existence, and every tiny detail of existence was a reminder of a memory waiting to happen.

She would have these strange moments where she would be doing something normal, something habitual. Like brushing her teeth or getting dressed or eating or filing paperwork or walking down the street and she would suddenly stop. She would simply freeze and for one moment she would feel absolute panic. The Earth would spin beneath her feet (one thousand six hundred and sixty-nine kilometers an hour at the equator, about one thousand six hundred and seventy-four kilometers an hour from where she was standing) and she would feel like she was falling up into the sky, tumbling out of control through space (sixty-seven thousand kilometers an hour playing celestial crack the whip with the sun and if those gravitational forces let go suddenly they were in for a whole heap of trouble). Her head would feel so empty and silent yet so painfully full and screaming. It was like she was on the very brink of remembering something. Something important that she had forgotten. Something so desperately important that her breath would quicken and she thought she would cry from frustration.

Then a car would go past or a dog would bark or someone would cough or drop something or a door would close. And the moment would be gone as if it never was and she would wonder, fleetingly, why it felt as if her heart had been pounding. As if she had just come out of a dead run while standing completely still.

It was a moment like this that caught her that morning. There she was sitting in the kitchen eating breakfast when a wave of homesickness hit her so hard she could barely swallow her cornflakes. It was a homesickness for a place she couldn't rightly name only that to her it felt like home. Sitting and eating cornflakes and straining to hear a sound that should have been there but wasn't. Something important was missing. Her heart ached and all she wanted to do was cry. Then Shaun flushed the loo and she swallowed her mouthful wondering why her throat suddenly hurt. Maybe she was catching a cold?

"You're up early, love." He commented, kissing her cheek and sliding into the chair across from her. She smiled up at him.

"Just couldn't sleep anymore I guess." She answered, "Funny thing, sleep. Sometimes I feel like I get too much of it." (Sleep one-third of our lives away we do, such a waste.)

"I couldn't be able to sleep anymore either with dreams like that." He said, grabbing a slice of toast from the small stack in the center of the table.

"What dreams would those be then?" She asked, shoving another spoonful into her mouth. He raised an incredulous eyebrow up at her.

"You're kidding, right?" He asked, "All that tossing and turning? Must've been one hell of a dream."

"Really?" She wondered, confused, "I did?"

"You don't remember?" He asked, buttering his toast, "You were talking in your sleep too. 'Wrong', You said, 'It's all wrong'."

"Remember..?" She stared at Shaun, thinking hard, "'Wrong'..? Why would I..?" She blinked for a moment, "I was someplace far away..." (Two hundred and fifty million light years away to be precise. Maybe somewhere near the Pisces-Cetus Super-cluster Complex. Coordinates ten-zero-eleven-zero-zero by zero-two. Only the first part of that is in binary-binary-binary-) "It was so quiet... No... Not quiet. Silent." (Silence in the grass and the trees and the sky. Silence in the world. Silence in her heart. Silence screaming in her head.)

"There's a difference?" He asked, smiling encouragingly. It was one of the reasons she liked him enough to love him, he was good at listening and asked the right questions to make her give him the right answers.

"Yeah." She said, staring at him with a strangely haunted expression, "Quiet kind of indicates some sort of sound at least. And sound equals life usually, yeah? This was a dead silence." (Because it was. Dead for so long it had forgotten what living was. What existence was. Frozen in a perfect moment that made it all the more horrible to look at. Like wax figures and porcelain dolls and funerals. Sterile like white walls and underground bunkers.)

"You were alone? There was no one else there?" He asked, worried now. He was such a sweetheart to worry about her, even if it was a dream. She smiled at him and shook her head, eyes still seeing that somewhere else.

"No... I mean, I thought I was at first... But it turned out there was someone there with me..." (A constant presence. Comforting like some childhood memory she had forgotten. Never alone. Never ever. Always someone at her back, watching the places she couldn't see. Unconditional love and understanding when she needed it most. Uncomfortable like an itch under her skin or a favorite song stuck in her head where she had forgotten most of the lyrics as well as part of the melody and was desperately trying to remember.)

"Was it me?" He asked teasingly. She shook her head slowly still trying to grasp the memory. He simply watched her, it was so rare to see her this quiet and contemplative, so concentrated on something he couldn't see. Her eyes changed color when she went to that place, he never really noticed it before. Blue and bluer, like the bluest blue ever, with a corona of starfire rising and flaring behind her pupils in a way that made him feel a touch dizzy as he watched.

"No..." She answered this time, her voice becoming softer and almost vulnerable in a way he had never heard before, "It was someone else..." (Tall, skinny smear of nothing in a trench coat, give yourself a paper cut if you hug him, cut yourself on the sharp edges in his eyes.) "Someone I cared about... Someone I worried about..." (His hearts can't take much more rough handling. You need someone to hold your hand, Spaceman or you're likely to forget you aren't god. I don't think the universe could handle it.) "Someone so close to me you'd think we were the same person..." (One starts the sentence, the other finishes, one thinks the idea the other completes the movement, one doesn't have to reach out a hand because the other is already holding it. One doesn't have to say it hurts because the other is already healing it. It never needs saying because it's already being said, every single time their eyes meet. Never alone.)

"Is it someone I know? A friend or something?" Shaun asked and she smiled at the sudden concern in his voice as if wondering if he should be jealous. They'd only recently moved in together and their relationship was still a bit new. They were still trying to figure the other out and what goes where in the bathroom cupboards. It had been a bit like a tango for them all quick-quick-slow, not that she knew how to tango. (He laughed at all her miss-steps and she took great pleasure in crushing his toes, but in the end it was all about his eyes. The lack of heartbreak and pain and the simple, unrestrained joy in them she had never seen before and she was having too much fun to stop. She would have danced forever she would, for the rest of her life. Made certain he walked away from her grave smiling instead of crying, remembering the SuperTemp of Chiswick who ran until her heart gave out.)

"No." She said, "You wouldn't know him... He's..." (Like fire and ice and thunder and lightning and volcanoes and diamonds) "He's..." (Like hugs and warmth and comfort and always knowing you had a place and a purpose.) "He's..." (Always learning something new and never stopping because everything you learned about life, the world and everything was a miracle to him. My god he's beautiful when he smiles, like he's so proud that you understand he could burst.) "He's..." (Gold like starlight and the blinding reflection in the mirror, like the piece of you that was broken off, like a spare right hand you never knew you needed, like the spinning of the planet and the song of the universe and the dizzying light of vortex and nebulae and black holes and Medusa and-)

"_I'm sorry. I'm so sorry..."_

"Donna? Are you alright?"

It took her a moment to realize she was clutching her head, fingers tugging at her hair, nails digging into her scalp. Her eyes felt weird and she blinked rapidly before sitting back up with a flourish.

"Fine, just fine. Got a really weird song stuck in my head s'all. What were we talking about?" She asked, standing up to put her half-finished bowl in the sink. Shaun blinked in confusion.

"We were talking about your dream and then you just grabbed your head like you were in pain." He answered, still looking concerned. Her eyes were blue again. Just blue and he was reminded suddenly of empty skies with no clouds, those days during the winter where it was so silent it was as if the world was dead. There was something missing that he never realized was missing until he had seen it there, that corona of starfire around her pupils as she tried to give words to things she couldn't name.

"Dream?" She shrugged, "Don't remember my dreams much. Boring old life I lead, who would?" She gave him a tender peck on the lips and another one on his nose, scrubbing at his hair with her knuckles fondly, "Now, I have to get into work or they'll fire me again for sure!" And just like that she was flouncing back to their room. A few minutes later she emerged fully dressed and blew him a kiss as she rushed out the door.

Shaun just blinked after her. He knew he loved her because of her fickle nature and lippy attitude, she was like a force of nature that woman. But sometimes his girlfriend could just be out of this world strange.


	3. The Neighbors

**AN: **I am being attacked by so many plot bunnies right now it's nuts! It's wonderful, but nuts! I'm deciding to merge my plotbunnies into some kind of storyline that can easily weave in and out of my DW fics. It's turning out really fun and interesting because there's a lot of things no one knows about a lot of the DW universe creatures.

The first storyarc in Cracks will go on for awhile as we follow Donna about her day as she glitches her way semi-successfully through life. There's probably about five more chapters left and then we'll start getting some wider plot in there. I've got some things planned out and I REALLY wanna slap the Doctor upside the head for just leaving her like that. I did some research and Donna wasn't the first companion he did that to. The last companion to have her memories sealed ended up bouncing in and out of psych wards for the rest of her life because things kept leaking through and she'd completely fall to pieces. Donna is made of stronger stuff and that's what has always worried me about the way Donna's plot line ended.

To everyone reading Eurybia's Memory, I am still working on it, I haven't given up on it. I'm going to be poking at chapter two again in the coming week, I just need to do a bit more research and then we'll be good to go with it. I'm so excited about the things I'm learning about the London Underground!

To everyone reading Slow Path, Swift Feet... Well... That's probably going to be put on hiatus for awhile. I still wanna do more with it because it's a fun story and Sarah Jane is fun to write!

To **Anonabelle**: I don't like sad stories either! None of my fics will be outrightly sad, but there will be a lot of emotional upheaval. I've been reading a lot of really good fics with well written emotional upheaval and they've started affecting my writing, in a good way I hope!

To **Tipear**: If there is, the Doctor better be prepared for a Noble fist in his face! It's still a bit too early to tell where this fic is going to end up sadly...

To **Witchy Bee**: Thank you for the kind words! I'm so embarrassed that I'm just going to have to write more it get over it! Oh no! Another flattering review?! I guess I'll just have to keep on writing until this blush goes away! ~3

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The flat they lived in, while small, wasn't nearly as bad as her mum kept making it out to be. She was rather proud of it in fact. It was just the right size for two and fit their budget snugly. Sometimes a bit too snugly but they always found ways around that, being a self-proclaimed SuperTemp had it's perks after all.

Although where some of of those references on her resume came from Donna couldn't really say. Sarah Jane Smith? Martha Jones? Jack Harkness? She must have met them at some point. But whenever she tried to remember where or when she got the most horrible headaches and when she tried to look them up she kept getting side-tracked. Shaun kept telling her not to worry about it, they were just contacts after all. She must have met them at some previous job which was why she didn't remember them. But Donna remembered everyone. She could remember the names and faces and random details of every single person she had worked with from every single job she had ever worked. It was only those missing two years that no one ever talked about that things started to get fuzzy and she wasn't going to ask about that no matter what. It was just easier that way.

Unless people from those two missing years tried to contact her or the jobs from those two missing years popped back up again. Then there would be a bit of a problem. An embarrassing problem where they would probably try to talk to her and she would probably blow them off. She knew herself well enough to know that she wasn't exactly the most genteel person to deal with. But unless that happened she wasn't going to think about it. So long as those ever so mysterious contacts got her jobs which allowed her to keep their flat she couldn't care less.

She liked the building, the set up was simple and felt both cramped and roomy at the same time which always gave her a feeling of bittersweet nostalgia. Their flat was on the third floor, right above the Colasantos and right below the Chestertons.

The Colasantos, from what she had seen, were a large rambunctious family. She wasn't quite sure just how many lived in the flat, they seemed to constantly have visitors who were either friends or extended family or both. They were lively and cheerful and sometimes, when Shaun had to work late, she would lie on the floor in the living room and just listen. They laughed and talked and sang almost constantly, it was a persistent wave of music that drifted through the floor. It was like listening to the tide come in. It was like that moment right before falling asleep or waking up when there was a strange feeling like singing in the back of her head that made her feel cherished and reassured. It was like that certain something she felt she was missing that took away the strange homesickness for awhile.

The voice she always listened hardest for was Bernadetta, fierce matriarch of the family. Everyone just called her Nana. She was always scolding and spoiling everyone in turns, her voice cracking like a whip. Even in her nineties she was a force to be reckoned with. It was her flat after all and she had just sort of cut loose after her husband died. One of the grand kids was, apparently, a permanent fixture but she wasn't sure which one and there were so many grandkids it was hard to pick out individual voices from the mess of adults and children.

It felt so strange to feel so homesick for a family she only knew through the living room floor. Sometimes it felt as if she could predict how an evening would go, her lips moving and smiling over old family jokes and stories, catchphrases and songs.

She wanted, so badly, to just go down the stairs, knock on that door and become one more niece in the crowd.

Bernadetta didn't speak English very well. When they were in her flat only Italian flowed, rapid-fire and full of unconditional acceptance and love.

So how was it that, when she closed her eyes with her ear to the floor, cradled in the sound of that so large and loving family, she could understand in perfect clarity what was being said? Questions like those seemed to pop up more and more frequently and it was getting harder and harder to stop asking. She never learned Italian (the rules for the translations were weird. If she tried speaking the native language they thought she was Welsh. Welsh!). If she concentrated too hard on what was being said it all became gibberish and she would feel so silly, spying on her neighbors when she couldn't understand what they were saying. She was turning into her Mum, she was. Soon she'd be hanging over the garden fence listening to Mrs. Next Door fight with her son about his weird obsession with aliens and that weird LINDA club that weirdos went to and blue boxes. (That sweet old blue box, the bluest blue ever, oh god she was homesick!)

She almost approached them once. Almost screwed her courage up enough to knock on that door and introduce herself. To learn enough Italian just to ask if there was room in that big family for a stray or two. Gramps would love them to bits and had always wanted to be part of a large family. Little Adelina missed her own grandfather dearly and Gramps would spoil her and her siblings and cousins rotten while Bernadetta beat him round the head with her cane chiding and cooing at once.

She almost did it, but on her way down the stairs she saw him. He was the eldest of Bernadetta's children. His voice was the loudest when he laughed and sang. She had never seen him, but she suddenly felt dizzy with recognition.

Rocco Colasanto. The name was like a sudden pain in her chest. It was like watching a beloved uncle die and then seeing him walking around town the very next day as if nothing had happened. She had to clutch the railing to keep from launching herself at him. He was a stranger in every way but she knew what her name sounded like when he said it. Knew what his arms and hands felt like when he hugged and patted and comforted. Knew the feel of his lips on her forehead and cheeks. Knew the way he liked his meals and his drinks and his vices. It was recognition the way she knew that, even if she had amnesia and lost all her memories, she would always recognize Gramps and what he meant to her. Something deep and visceral. Something that wrenched at her mind and body so hard she had barely managed to stumble back up the stairs, through her door and to the kitchen sink before she was violently sick. All that came out was some sort of smokey substance that wasn't air and wasn't solid but, to her blurred vision, glowed and sparkled like sunlight.

When she woke up she was on the kitchen floor, her last memory a confused jumble of missing her father desperately and horror stories Gramps had told of World War II concentration camps and what had happened to the people who went there.

The Chestertons were another story. She had seen them a few times and they had been pleasant, if somewhat vague. Sometimes she could hear them arguing through the ceiling and other times she could hear the sound footsteps make when they're dancing. They were a couple just entering their forties, but they looked so much younger, as if time had a finger light hold on them. They also dressed and behaved as if they were trapped in the early sixties which was confusing and refreshing at the same time. Retired school teachers from London apparently. She had never really heard of teachers retiring that young but maybe they had come into a bit of luck. Although why former school teachers who had come into enough luck to retire early were living not only in Chiswick, but in that particular building was anyone's guess. They seemed faintly familiar to her, as if she had seen their pictures or had been told stories about them. She felt a strange sort of fondness for them and while she never felt the hesitation and need for avoidance like she did with the Colasantos, she never approached them either. She greeted them if she encountered them in the hallway, but never stayed to talk. Most of the building found them strange. Donna found them delightful but was strangely shy about approaching them so she never did. Like that one annoying time she tried to convince a magic 8 ball that yes, she did want to buy it. The magic 8 ball had convinced her otherwise. Stupid sources. Where was that ball getting it's sources from anyway? Mars? So, like then, Donna had only smiled a greeting whenever she had seen the couple and hurried on her way.

It was unlike her. So very much out of character. She had been in contact with every single other resident in the building, more than half were on a first name basis with her, except for those two neighbors.

It bothered her. A lot. She was Donna Noble for heaven's sake! (There are shrines in Rome that worshiped her. An archeologist from the far future meets her eyes as if meeting the eyes of a hero. Donnafriend, sings the Oodsphere, DoctorDonnaFriend. Military leaders salute her out of fear and respect.) She wasn't afraid of nothing and nobody! (The demons of Vesuvius couldn't keep her at bay. One life, Doctor, just one life! Like forcing a miracle from the lips of a god. She wept for the slaves and even after she could no longer hear their cries she still heard them in her sleep. She would tear down the governments of Earth for the sake of freedom! Potato people who could kill her in an instant went down without a fight. She stared Daleks straight in the eyes-stalk and laughed.) She could take care of herself! (She didn't need him, she didn't need anyone! She could take care of herself! And if they didn't like it they could drown in the heart of a frozen sun for all she cared! She could take care of herself!) She could. She... Could...

"_All that attitude, all that lip because all this time you think you're not worth it..."_

There were times where she felt the near uncontrollable urge to slam her head repeatedly against something hard to make that strange itching, unnerving feeling inside her go away. Sometimes she felt like two Donnas. One who took up more space than her frame really should and made sure she was the center of attention in as much of life as she could (Shouting at the world because no one is listening and why should they?). Then there was the other Donna, the Donna that spent two years living her life and where did all those months go? What happened to make Gramps look at her like she was fragile and precious? What happened to make her Mum be more patient and cautious? What had this Donna done? This Donna wasn't her! Well she was, but she needed to buck up and assimilate already! Being shy around neighbors and people she should be getting to know! She should be gathering as much gossip as possible, she should be worming her way into these peoples lives despite themselves! She should be jumping into life feet first just so she could hit the ground running (and that's what she missed the most, after all. The running. That's probably what all of them missed the most in the end...) All that strange shyness and hesitation and the feeling that she shouldn't it was crazy and out of character and it bothered her.

It bothered her enough that as she rushed down the hallway towards the stairs she made a point to slow down as she saw Bernadetta going through her mail. Taking a deep breath she made eye-contact with the matronly woman, smiled like she was going into battle, nodded as if to a comrade and said,

"Good morning, Mrs. Colasanto."

The elderly woman looked up at her, paused and squinted for a moment, as if trying to place her, then she brightened like the sun coming out and smiled back openly and fondly, as if to one of her own.

"Good morning, Donna dear." She murmured, her accent thick and rich and warm like spiced cider on a cold night.

Donna barely made it around the corner before her knees gave out. The look in Bernadetta's eyes had been one of fond recognition. It felt like a homecoming. She swallowed hard as her chest hurt and her eyes swam, gripping her heart with one hand and the wall with the other. Dizziness took her and for a moment she felt like she could almost remember...

"_And you! I will miss you most of all! All flame-hair and firey! Now stop before I kiss you too much!"_

She did know the Colasantos. She did. Knew them as she knew her own family. Loved them like family. Cared for them like family. Got frustrated and angry and afraid for them like family. They had been so close once, crammed together like sardines and so happy as the world fell apart around them.

Then they had been taken away from her. Ripped from her arms. Rosetta, who had not shed one single tear since the disaster began had wept fearfully in Rocco's arms. Gramps had cried, openly and honestly, as if his heart was broken.

"_Labor camps... That's what they called them last time... It's happening again..!"_

And it hurt knowing that and it hurt missing them and it hurt knowing that with just a simple change of direction so much had been destroyed and it was all her fau-

"Are you alright?"

Donna gasped and stood up, the strange lightheadedness fading away quickly and she smiled at Mrs. Chesterton's concerned expression.

"Fine, just fine. Felt a bit faint is all." She waved her away quickly, "I could be coming down with something, going down the stairs as fast as I was. It'll be fine."

"If you're sure." The brunette woman frowned in concern, hefting a bag full of books more firmly into her arms.

"I'm fine. I'm always fine. Don't worry about me, Mrs. Chesterton." She reassured, straightening her suit jacket and trying out a smile. It felt strange and wobbly but she forced her muscles into submission. Her neighbor from upstairs smiled in fond exasperation, her eyes strangely understanding.

"Oh, if I had a shilling for every time I heard that one." She griped goodnaturedly, "And please. Call me Barbara. We are neighbors after all."

"Yes... Barbara..." The name felt good to say and she smiled more easily. She glanced at a nearby wall clock and blanched.

"I'm gonna miss my bus!" She shrieked, grabbing her purse and darting for the stairs to the lobby.

"Take care of yourself Donna! You're too important to lose!" Barbara called after her.

"I will!" She yelled back, already halfway down the stairwell.

It wasn't until she was at the bus stop with three minutes to spare that she realized that even though she had nodded and smiled in passing to those particular neighbors she had never taken the time to introduce herself.

So how was it that they both knew her name?


End file.
